Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World
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8. Pope, An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, lines 201–4.
9. Swift to Gay, May 4, 1732, Corr., 3:469; Congreve, quoted by Craik, 2:204.
10. Ashley Marshall subjects the alleged “Scriblerian” tradition to trenchant criticism in “The Myth of Scriblerus,” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 31 (2008): 77–99.
11. Journal, 1:120 (Dec. 13, 1710).
12. Swift’s letter to the Evening Post, Nov. 12, 1712, PW, 6:196–97; Journal, 2:572–73 (Nov. 15, 1712).
13. Gulliver’s Travels, book 4, ch. 5, p. 247; John Wesley, The Doctrine of Original Sin (1756), in Works (New York: Waugh and Mason, 1835), 5:512.
14. Examiners 28 and 37, PW, 3:87, 133–34.
15. Holmes, Marlborough, xix–xx, 438.
16. Examiner 16, PW. 3:22–23.
17. An Account of the Conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough (London: George Hawkins, 1742), 153; Memoirs of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (1736), in Critical Heritage, 101.
18. HMC 8th Report, Marlborough Papers, quoted by Barnett, The First Churchill, 262; Swift, History of the Last Four Years of Queen Anne’s Reign, 7:30.
19. A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General, lines 1–4, 13–16, 29–32, Poems, 1:297; the “dust thou art” text quotes Genesis 3:19.
20. Journal, 2:408 (Nov. 10, 1711).
21. Trevelyan, 3:192; Journal, 2:474 (Jan. 28, 1712).
22. Johnson, Life of Swift, 3:19; Boswell, Life of Johnson, 2:65 (summer 1768).
23. The Conduct of the Allies, 6:6, 41.
24. Ibid., 6:19.
25. Johnson, Life of Swift, 19; Trevelyan, 3:254.
26. Journal, 2:449–50 (Dec. 29, 1711).
27. A. D. MacLachlan, “The Road to Peace, 1710–13,” in “The Revolution and the People,” in Britain After the Glorious Revolution, ed. Geoffrey Holmes (London: Macmillan, 1969), 213, 197; King to Swift, May 29, 1712, Corr., 1:425.
28. History of the Last Four Years of Queen Anne’s Reign, 7:167.
29. Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century, 37.
CHAPTER 17. TORY COLLAPSE
1. Quoted by Holmes, The Making of a Great Power, 254.
2. Journal, 1:195 (Feb. 18, 1711); “we will not be harled” quoted by Downie, 149.
3. Journal, 1:206 (Mar. 4, 1711).
4. Gulliver’s Travels, book 1, ch. 5, p. 56.
5. Journal, 1:327–28 (Aug. 6, Aug. 8, 1711).
6. Journal, 1:126 (Dec. 14, 1710).
7. The Windsor Prophecy, lines 15–20, Poems, 1:148.
8. Quoted by Real, Securing Swift, 232.
9. Journal, 2:444–46 (Dec. 24, Dec. 16, 1711).
10. Gulliver’s Travels, book 2, ch. 5, p. 124; Carole Fabricant suggests the application to Swift’s experience at court, Swift’s Landscape (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 227–28. On Swift suppressing any mention of The Windsor Prophecy, see Hermann J. Real, “The Most Fateful Piece Swift Ever Wrote,” Swift Studies (1994): 79n.
11. Journal, 2:480; Swift to Oxford, Feb. 5, 1712, Corr., 1:414.
12. Journal, 16:660 (Apr. 13, 1713).
13. Journal, 2:663, 666 (Apr. 20, Apr. 23, 1713).
14. Sheridan, 138.
15. Bolingbroke to Swift, Dec. 25, 1723, Corr., 2:479.
16. Journal, 2:665 (Apr. 23, 1713); Dr. William King’s Anecdotes, quoted by Forster, 169n.
17. Journal, 2:662 (Apr. 18, 1713).
18. Swift to Vanessa, May 31, 1713; Vanessa to Swift, June 1713, Corr., 1:498, 510.
19. Journal, 2:669 (May 16, 1713); see Louis A. Landa, “Swift’s Deanery Income,” in Essays in Eighteenth-Century Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 115–16.
20. Erasmus Lewis to Swift, Aug. 6, 1713, Corr., 1:525.
21. Sir Constantine Phipps to Swift, Oct. 24, 1713, Corr., 1:542.
22. Swift to Bishop Stearne, Dec. 19, 1713, Corr., 1:566.
23. Swift to King, Dec. 31, 1713, Corr., 1:574; Nokes, 201–2.
24. Part of the Seventh Epistle of the First Book of Horace Imitated, lines 67–70, 1:173.
25. Ibid., lines 91–92, 101–6, 131–38, 1:173–75.
26. On specific points that the second Lord Oxford objected to, see PW, 7:xv. The historians quoted are W. A. Speck, “Swift and the Historian,” in Reading Swift, 1:257–68; and S. J. Connolly, “Swift and Protestant Ireland: Images and Reality,” in Douglas et al., Locating Swift, 35.
27. The Importance of the Guardian Considered, PW, 8:5–6; The Public Spirit of the Whigs, PW, 8:36.
28. The Public Spirit, 8:53.
29. PW, 8:xxi.
30. Oxford to Swift, Mar. 3, 1714, Corr., 1:589.
31. Swift to Peterborough, May 18, 1714, Corr., 1:600–601.
32. Peterborough to Swift, Mar. 5, 1714, Corr., 1:591.
33. Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, lines 365–70, 2:567.
34. Bolingbroke to Swift, July 13, 1714, Corr., 2:1–2.
35. John Geree to Swift, Apr. 24, 1714; Swift to Vanessa, June 8, 1714, Corr., 1:598, 606.
36. Pope to Arbuthnot, July 11, 1714, The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, 1:234–35.
37. Erasmus Lewis to Swift, July 27, 1714, Corr., 2:31.
38. Arbuthnot to Swift, Aug. 12, 1714, Corr., 2:70; Oxford college head, quoted by Gregg, Queen Anne, 395.
39. Bolingbroke to Swift, Aug. 3, 1714, Corr., 2:47; Swift to Archdeacon Walls, Aug. 8, 1714, Corr., 2:63; The Words upon the Window-Pane, in The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, vol. 2, The Plays, ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark (New York: Scribner, 2001), 468.
40. Some Thoughts upon the Present State of Affairs, PW, 8:86–87.
41. The Author upon Himself, lines 9–14, 1–2, 53–56, 1:193–95. Several blanks in the poem have been filled in with names supplied by Orrery (Rogers, 670).
42. Swift to Bolingbroke, Oct. 31, 1729; Swift to Pope, Mar. 23, 1733, Corr., 3:261, 615.
43. Arbuthnot to Swift, Aug. 12, 1714, Corr., 2:70–71.
CHAPTER 18. RELUCTANT DUBLINER
1. Trevelyan, 3:97; A Concordance to the Poems of Jonathan Swift, ed. Michael Shinagel (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972).
2. J. H. Bernard, The Cathedral Church of Saint Patrick, rev. J. E. L. Oulton (Dublin: Talbot, 1940), 7–8; Fagan, The Second City, 23; Maurice Craig, Dublin, 1660–1860: The Shaping of a City (Dublin: Liberties, 2006), 31.
3. Swift to Gay, Nov. 20, 1729, Corr., 3:268; introduction to Pepys, Diary, 1:xxxi.
4. Trevelyan, 1:52.
5. Delany, 131.
6. Lyon, 75; Ehrenpreis, 2:277. Peter Steele borrows Ehrenpreis’s words for the title of Jonathan Swift: Preacher and Jester (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978).
7. Delany, 29; A Letter to a Young Gentleman, Lately Entered into Holy Orders, 9:66.
8. Delany, 140.
9. “Some Further Account,” in Faulkner’s 1763 edition of Works, 11:324.
10. Swift to Dean Mossom, Feb. 14, 1721, Corr., 2:366. On the various ecclesiastical confrontations, see Downie, 211–12.
11. Elgy Gillespie, ed., The Liberties of Dublin (Dublin: O’Brien, 1973), 28–38.
12. Swift to Rev. James Stopford, Nov. 26, 1725, Corr., 2:619–20; Swift to Pope, June 28, 1715, Corr., 2:133; The Author’s Manner of Living, Poems, 3:954; Erasmus Jones, “A Brief and Merry Character of Ireland,” in A Trip through London (1728), 53–54.
13. Bernard, The Cathedral Church of Saint Patrick, 21.
14. See Corr., 3:502n, 505n; Woolley prints one of Swift’s wine contracts, Corr., 4:117–18.
15. Gulliver’s Travels, book 4, ch. 6, p. 252; Swift to Charles Ford, Dec. 20, 1718, Corr., 2:286. Swift’s many references to wine are surveyed by Michael DePorte, “Vinum Daemonum: Swift and the Grape,” Swift Studies 12 (1997): 56–68.
16. Swift to Knightley Chetwode, October 1724, Corr., 2:524; Gulliver’s Travels, book 2, ch. 1, p. 89.
17. Swift to Charles Ford, Feb. 16, 1719, Corr., 2:290.
18. Arbuthnot to Swift, Dec. 11, 1718, and Nov. 5,
1730; Swift to Ford, Oct. 9, 1733; Ford to Swift, Nov. 6, 1733, Corr., 2:282, 3:331, 692, 698; on the quilted cap, Corr., 3:714n.
19. Leslie Stephen, Swift (New York: Harper, 1887), 197.
20. Handwritten note by Orrery in a copy of his book, Orrery, 432.
21. Pilkington, 1:28.
22. See Ehrenpreis, 3:833; Pilkington, 2:239 (Elias’s note on wages); and Barnett, Jonathan Swift in the Company of Women, 84.
23. Laws for the Dean’s Servants, PW, 13:161–62.
24. PW, 13:14–15; Lyon, 751.
25. Delany, 6; Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century, 19.
26. Causes of the Wretched Condition of Ireland, PW, 9:204; Samuel Johnson, Rambler 68.
27. Delany, 127–28.
28. Patrick Delany, Verses on the Deanery Window, Poems, 1:261.
29. Swift to the Daniel Jackson, Mar. 26, 1722, Corr., 2:418; see 417n; Lyon, 35.
30. Delany, 133; Ehrenpreis, 3:323 (suggesting that the snobbish friend was Sheridan); Jonathan Smedley, Gulliveriana (London, 1728), 10, 3, xi; and see Ann Cline Kelly, “Written in Stone: Swift’s Use of St. Patrick’s Cathedral as a Text,” Swift Studies 21 (2006): 109–10.
31. Swift to Pope, Aug. 11, 1729, (quoting Exodus 2:22); Swift to Knightley Chetwode, Nov. 23, 1727; Swift to Sheridan, July 8, 1726; Swift to Bolingbroke, Mar. 21, 1730, Corr., 3:245, 3:139, 2:651–52, 3:295.
32. Deane Swift, 181.
33. Pilkington, 1:283.
34. See Brian Boydell, “Music Before 1700,” in Moody and Vaughan, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 562–63. The Gaelic form of the name is given by Carole Fabricant, “Speaking for the Irish Nation: The Drapier, the Bishop, and the Problems of Colonial Representation,” ELH 66 (1999): 342.
35. A New Year’s Gift for the Dean of St. Patrick’s Given Him at Quilca, 1724, in The Poems of Thomas Sheridan, ed. Robert Hogan (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994), 133.
36. The Description of an Irish Feast, lines 1–8, 37–44, Poems, 1:244–45. Fabricant, Swift’s Landscape, 245–48, gives examples of Gaelic words in Swift, but she accepts as his a ballad that Williams was dubious about (Poems, 3:840) and that Rogers (595) rejects altogether.
37. A Dialogue in Hibernian Style, in Swift’s Irish Writings, ed. Carole Fabricant and Robert Mahony (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 184 (a more accurate transcription than the version in PW, 4:278). My identification of the Gaelic words relies on the notes in this edition.
38. On Barbarous Denominations in Ireland, PW, 4:280; Answer to Several Letters from Unknown Persons, PW, 12:89. See Robert Mahony, “Jonathan Swift and the Irish Colonial Project,” in Rawson, Politics and Literature in the Age of Swift, 270–89.
39. Delany, 73; Sheridan, 321.
40. Ad Amicum Eruditum Thomam Sheridan, Poems, 1:213; see James Woolley’s introduction to the Intelligencer 18; Mary the Cook-Maid’s Letter to Dr. Sheridan, line 10, Poems, 3:985; The History of the Second Solomon, PW, 5:223; Swift to Ford, Jan. 19, 1724, Corr., 2:487.
41. The Sheridan family name is mentioned by Fintan O’Toole, A Traitor’s Kiss: The Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998), 3–10; Sheridan, 322.
42. Fagan, The Second City, 28, 30.
43. Sheridan, quoted in Woolley’s edition of the Intelligencer 8; Swift to Mrs. Whiteway, Nov. 28, 1735, Corr., 4:238–39; Sheridan to Swift, Apr. 5, 1735, Corr., 4:81–82; Rogers, 735. See James Woolley, “Thomas Sheridan and Swift,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 9 (1979): 93–114.
44. Sheridan, 321.
45. Undated letter (first printed by Faulkner), Ball, The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, 5:436.
46. Woolley, “Thomas Sheridan and Swift,” 101–2; and Woolley’s introduction to the Intelligencer 17.
47. “The Original of Punning, from Plato’s Symposiacs,” in The Poems of Thomas Sheridan, 95.
48. Discourse to Prove the Antiquity of the English Tongue, PW, 4:236; A Modest Defense of Punning, PW, 4:206.
CHAPTER 19. POLITICAL PERIL
1. Index to the Examiner, PW, 14:12; Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, line 380, 2:568.
2. Swift’s relations with known Jacobites, and the similarity of some of his opinions to theirs, are surveyed by Higgins in Swift’s Politics. Higgins is sometimes criticized for claiming that Swift actually was a Jacobite, but he doesn’t make that claim, confirming that he kept clear of actual involvement.
3. Erasmus Lewis to Swift, Feb. 1715; Swift to Chetwode, June 21, 1715, Corr., 2:112, 129; King to Christopher Delafaye, June 4, 1715, in Williams, The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, 5:233; Passmann and Vienken, The Library and Reading of Jonathan Swift, 1:437; Pope to Swift, June 30, 1716, Corr., 2:174.
4. Sheridan, 183.
5. PW, 5:199–200; see Ehrenpreis, 3:22.
6. Dickinson, Bolingbroke, 135.
7. Plumb, 1:189.
8. Ehrenpreis, 2:585. These issues are explored by Jeanne Clegg, “Swift on False Witness,” Studies in English Literature 44 (2004): 461–85.
9. Swift to King, Dec. 22, 1716, Corr., 2:205.
10. King to Swift, Jan. 12, 1717, Corr., 2:215.
11. Quoted by Wolfgang Michael, England under George I: The Beginnings of the Hanoverian Dynasty (New York: AMS, 1970), 152.
12. An Enquiry into the Behaviour of the Queen’s Last Ministry, 8:133.
13. Swift to Oxford, July 19, 1715, Corr., 2:139; To the Earl of Oxford . . . in the Tower, lines 15–18, Poems, 1:210.
14. Lewis to Swift, June 15, July 2, 1717, Corr., 2:244, 246.
15. Swift to Oxford, July 9, 1717; Oxford to Swift, Aug. 6, 1717; Swift to the second Earl of Oxford, July 9, 1724, Corr., 2:249, 256, 504.
16. On False Witness, PW, 9:180; Landa’s introduction (117–18) discusses Swift’s sense of vulnerability in these years. Swift to Pope, Jan. 10, 1721, Corr., 2:361.
17. Quoted by Plumb, 1:180–81.
18. History of the Last Four Years of Queen Anne’s Reign, 7:65; Plumb, 1:xi, 92, 2:91.
19. As Trevelyan notes (1:276).
20. Plumb, 2:88, 90, 111.
21. Gulliver’s Travels, book 1, ch. 3, p. 39; but the usual identification with the Duchess of Kendal is probably wrong. See Harold Williams’s introduction in PW, 11:xix; and Higgins, Swift’s Politics, 173–74.
22. Epistle to a Lady, lines 159–60, Poems, 2:635; The Life and Genuine Character of Doctor Swift, lines 107–8; Poems, 2:548.
23. Gulliver’s Travels, book 4, ch. 3, pp. 262–63.
24. Upon the Horrid Plot, lines 1–4, Poems, 1:298. The poem was first published in 1735, in Faulkner’s edition of Swift’s Works. My account of the Atterbury affair is drawn from Edward Rosenheim Jr., “Swift and the Atterbury Case,” in The Augustan Milieu: Essays Presented to Louis A. Landa, ed. Henry Knight Miller et al. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), 174–204; G. V. Bennett, The Tory Crisis in Church and State (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975); and Eveline Cruickshanks and Howard Erskine-Hill, The Atterbury Plot (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
25. Gulliver’s Travels, book 3, ch. 6, p. 191.
26. Quoted by Rosenheim, “Swift and the Atterbury Case,” 202.
27. Gulliver’s Travels, book 1, ch. 7, pp. 69, 72.
CHAPTER 20. THE IRISH COUNTRYSIDE
1. Swift to Pope, Aug. 25, 1726, Corr., 3:19.
2. Swift to Archdeacon Walls, May 22, 1715, Corr., 2:127; the suggestion about the name Bolingbroke comes from DePorte, “Swift’s Horses of Instruction,” 2:206.
3. Swift describes the incident in a letter to Walls, Dec. 27, 1714, Corr., 2:105–6.
4. Gulliver’s Travels, book 4, ch. 4, p. 241.
5. 1 Kings 21:1–29.
6. Swift to Bolingbroke, Mar. 21, 1730, Corr., 3:295; Swift to Rev. Stafford Lightburne, Apr. 22, 1725, Corr., 2:553.
7. The Duty of Servants at Inns, PW, 13:163–65.
8. Journal, lines 9–16, 74, Poems, 1:278, 281. In line 14 I follow Rogers in giving “ends our lectures”; Poems has “ends or lectures,” which m
akes no sense.
9. Ibid, lines 65–68, 77–82. The poem was written in 1721 and published as a broadside in 1722. Percival, A Description in Answer to the Journal (published in 1722 as an anonymous broadside), quoted by Ann Cline Kelly, Jonathan Swift and Popular Culture, 71.
10. Swift to Daniel Jackson, Oct. 6, 1721, Corr., 2:401.
11. Swift to Knightley Chetwode, May 27, 1725, Corr., 2:555; see Joseph McMinn, “The Humours of Quilca: Swift, Sheridan, and County Cavan,” in Walking Naboth’s Vineyard: New Studies of Swift, ed. Christopher Fox and Brenda Tooley (Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 143–53.
12. Sheridan, 308; Fabricant, Swift’s Landscape, 160; Swift to Chetwode, May 27, 1725, Corr., 2:554; “the harvest was spoiled” quoted by James Kelly, “Harvests and Hardship: Famine and Scarcity in Ireland in the Late 1720s,” Studia Hibernica 26 (1992): 72.
13. Swift to the 2nd Earl of Oxford, Aug. 14, 1725, Corr., 2:583.
14. To Quilca, lines 1–4, 9–12, Poems, 3:1035; Sheridan, A True and Faithful Inventory of the Goods Belonging to Dr. Swift, Vicar of Laracor, lines 1–4, Poems, 3:1044.
15. The Blunders, Deficiencies, Distresses, and Misfortunes of Quilca, PW, 5:219–21.
16. Sheridan, Tom Punsibi’s Letter to Dean Swift, lines 20–26, 29–36, Poems, 3:1046. I follow a different reading for lines 31–32, as given in Hogan, The Poems of Thomas Sheridan, 113.
17. Sheridan, 344.
18. Swift to Dr. Sheridan, June 25, 1725, Corr., 2:559, 561n.
19. “A Pilgrimage to Quilca in the Year 1852,” signed “B” [R. S. Brooke], Dublin University Magazine, November 1852, 509–25.
CHAPTER 21. STELLA
1. On the Death of Mrs. Johnson, 5:227; Scott, 223 (adding that his unnamed informant was a lady “equally distinguished for high rank, eminent talents, and the soundest judgment”); Dunton, Some Account of My Conversation in Ireland, 200.
2. Dingley and Brent: A Song (probably written around 1724), Poems, 2:755–56.
3. Haworth, “Jonathan Swift and the Geography of Laracor,” 23, quoting William R. Wilde, The Closing Years of Dean Swift’s Life (Dublin: Hodges and Smith, 1849), 97.
4. Thackeray, The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century, 408.
5. Bon Mots de Stella, PW, 5:238.